Leaves tufted at the ends of naked branches, in 2 or in 2 and 3-leaved clusters, stout, dark yellow-green, marked by numerous rows of stomata on the 3 faces, 5′—11′ long, mostly deciduous during their third season. Flowers: male yellow; female clustered or in pairs, dark red. Fruit ellipsoidal, horizontal or slightly declining, nearly sessile or short-stalked, 3′—6′ long, often clustered, bright green or purple when fully grown, becoming light reddish brown, with narrow scales much thickened at the apex and armed with slender prickles, mostly falling soon after opening and discharging their seeds, generally leaving the lower scales attached to the peduncle; seeds ovoid, acute, compressed at the apex, full and rounded below, ¼′ long, with a thin dark purple often mottled shell, their wings usually broadest below the middle, gradually narrowed at the oblique apex, 1′—1¼′ long, about 1′ wide.
A tree, sometimes 150°—230° high, with a massive stem 5°—8° in diameter, short thick many-forked often pendulous branches generally turned upward at the ends and forming a regular spire-like head, or in arid regions a broader often round-topped head surmounting a short trunk, and stout orange-colored branchlets frequently becoming nearly black at the end of two or three years. Bark for 80—100 years broken into rounded ridges covered with small closely appressed scales, dark brown, nearly black or light cinnamon-red, on older trees becoming 2′—4′ thick and deeply and irregularly divided into plates sometimes 4°—5° long and 12′—18′ wide, and separating into thick bright cinnamon-red scales. Wood hard, strong, comparatively fine-grained, light red, with nearly white sapwood sometimes composed of more than 200 layers of annual growth; largely manufactured into lumber used for all sorts of construction, for railway-ties, fencing, and fuel.
Distribution. Mountain slopes, dry valleys, and high mesas from northwestern Nebraska and western Texas to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and from southern British Columbia to Lower California and northern Mexico; extremely variable in different parts of the country in size, in the length and thickness of the leaves, size of the cones, and in the color of the bark. The form of the Rocky Mountains (var. scopulorum, Engelm.), ranging from Nebraska to Texas, and over the mountain ranges of Wyoming, eastern Montana and Colorado, and to northern New Mexico and Arizona, where it forms on the Colorado plateau with the species the most extensive Pine forests of the continent, has nearly black furrowed bark, rigid leaves in clusters of 2 or 3 and 3′—6′ long, and smaller cones, with thin scales armed with slender prickles hooked backward. More distinct is
Pinus ponderosa var. Jeffreyi Vasey.
This tree forms great forests about the sources of the Pitt River in northern California, along the eastern slopes of the central and southern Sierra Nevada, growing often on the most exposed and driest ridges, and in southern California on the San Bernardino and San Jacinto ranges up to elevations of 7000° above the sea, on the Cuyamaca Mountains, and in Lower California on the Sierra del Pinal and the San Pedro Mártir Mountains.
A tree, 100° to nearly 200° high, with a tall massive trunk 4°—6° in diameter, covered with bright cinnamon-red bark deeply divided into large irregular plates, stiffer and more elastic leaves 4′—9′ long and persistent on the glaucous stouter branchlets for six to nine years, yellow-green staminate flowers, short-stalked usually purple cones 5′—15′ long, their scales armed with stouter or slender prickles usually hooked backward, and seeds often nearly ½′ long with larger wings.
Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in eastern Europe, especially the variety Jeffreyi, which is occasionally successfully cultivated in the eastern states.